Simple strategies, such as the use of restorative circles in classrooms, provide opportunity for students to communicate with their peers and teachers about feelings and concerns, reducing the anxiety and misunderstanding that produce tension and conflict in schools.

Both the NY Times and the Today Show stories do their audience a disservice by dwelling on forgiveness as the apparent reason for restorative justice. Forgiveness is neither an expectation nor a goal of restorative justice.

Restorative practices is a movement slowly transforming troubled schools and troubled communities around the globe -- a movement replacing zero tolerance and other punishment-based and wildly ineffective practices that increase people's feelings of separation and alienation from one another.